


Regrets

by Chya



Category: CI5: The New Professionals
Genre: Action/Adventure, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-12-30
Updated: 1999-12-30
Packaged: 2018-01-06 18:37:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1110206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chya/pseuds/Chya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The following report is angsty in nature, with the focus on Chris Keel, Agent 45.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Regrets

**Author's Note:**

> This is not my normal type of stuff (apart from the angst of course!), so don't even think about looking for a plot. I read the eulogy at a funeral on Friday for a family member who I'd forgotten how much I'd loved. As I normally do, when I need to find some sort of catharsis I wrote, yesterday, and this is what came out. It's not beta'd and it reads more like a first draft - but that's the way I want it. So there!

"CI5, Freeze!" Chris Keel shouted as he burst into the shack. The four men froze obediently as Sam Curtis came crashing in the back way. A slight movement to Chris' right caught his eye and a figure charged out of the shadows at Sam, a blade held high.

Without thought, he shouted a warming to his partner, and shot the figure who dropped to the floor in mid-stride. One of the men at the table stood and shouted at Chris in a language he could not identify.

Sam and Chris secured the four men before they examined the fifth figure on the floor.

"What was that guy babbling on about?" Chris asked.

"He was Lithuanian, and I think he said that you murdered his wife." Sam said matter-of-factly as they turned the body over.

She was a very pretty blue eyed blonde, and to Chris, it was a shock how much she resembled his dead wife. For a brief moment lost in a far away time, he reached out a hand to touch her cheek.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, her blue-eyed stare was intense as she tried to explain to him, tried to draw breath around the bullet that was lodged in her lung. "I didn't mean to - I thought he would kill - my husband – "

Chris could not break free from her dying gaze, and was not wholly sure that he wanted to. For a few seconds longer, she stared at him. Then her last breath left her body, and her soul passed on to await her beloved husband. But even in death, her eyes never left Chris'. He knew she had gone, but her dead eyes held him even more than when she was alive. Just like Alex.

Sam pulled him away, "Chris? Are you okay? You were miles away."

Chris rubbed a hand over his face, "Yeah, fine," he lied, "Just tired."

*****

"I want you and Mr Keel back in London ASAP," Malone's voice crackled over the telephone, "There is a flight leaving JFK in four hours. Miss Backus has booked you both on it."

Chris, who had been uncharacteristically quiet during the drive through New York, grabbed the phone from Sam. "Sir, I'm requesting three days leave of absence starting now."

"Mr Keel, I need you and Mr Curtis back in London. That is order."

"But Sir, I – "

"An order, Mr Keel." The connection was cut.

*****

Malone sat in his office, considering. It was quite unlike Chris Keel to ask for impromptu time off. On a sneaking suspicion he raised Keel's file and looked for a date. There it was, 21st June; tomorrow. Someone had previously noted that Keel had always worked the week of the 21st through 28th June every year, even after being offered the time off. Whatever had happened to make this year any different?

*****

"Mr Keel," came Malone's voice, "Miss Backus and Mr Spencer have just become available to take on this next case, therefore you can have your three days, as can you Mr Curtis. Miss Backus has amended your reservations to the 23rd." The connection went silent, and Sam muttered, "That was unexpected."

"Mmmmm," was Chris' only response, as he appeared to concentrate on the road.

"I just can't get you to shut up today, can I?"

"Mmmmm."

"Earth to Chris! Is there anybody in there?"

"Mmmmm. Mmmmm?" Chris looked at Sam, startled, "What? Oh, sorry," he said, "Just thinking. Could you book me flight to Los Angeles?? First one available."

Sam shrugged, "Okay," and rang a booking office, "Two return seats to Los Angeles, please." When he had finished, Chris looked at him. "What?" he asked the American.

"I said for me, not us."

"Don't you want me to come then?" said Sam with mock petulance. "I've just been given three days off that I don't know what to do with."

Chris smiled half-heartedly, "I guess I'm stuck with you then."

"Yep," replied Sam happily. "You certainly are."

Less than twenty four hours later, they had crossed the continent, found a hotel and had caught up on some sleep. Now, Sam sat in the car outside the cemetery gates. Chris had gone inside on some 'personal business' nearly an hour ago. He had warned Sam that he would be a long time, but Sam was getting worried. He would go check on his partner if he were much longer.

*****

Chris sat by the wall where Alexandra's ashes were interned, the plaque just to the right of his ear.

He had tried to apologise to her, but the words wouldn't come. Thinking about it helped, and he had chosen to sit while he tried to put his thoughts in order. The girl from the shack's face kept intruding on his thoughts, but he pushed it away. He didn't want to think about her right now.

He turned his thoughts to the funeral. There had been many funerals that week, and Alex's was the last. Her father had asked him to do her eulogy. He had laid her mother to rest the previous day, and could not face doing a second eulogy. Chris had reluctantly agreed. His own mother was having a difficult enough time with his father and sister's deaths. She had taken them both on herself, refusing to let Chris in. Not that he had tried.

Alex's father and her best friend, Annie had helped him write it. He could barely look at Annie, the dancer who would never walk again.

*****

As he sat in the chapel, eyes fixed upon the coffin on the bier, he looked inside of himself for the love he had had for Alex, and found nothing. It had been the same for his father and his sister.

The minister began the service, and while all around him were sniffing, and quietly coughing, he felt apart from them. Like cold stone, unfeeling and stoic. When his turn came, he faced congregation, people squeezed into the building, standing where there was no room to sit.

He read the eulogy out to them calmly and clearly. Towards the end though, where he had written some of his own thoughts, he choked over the words, trying to hold back the tears. He felt the empathy from the congregation washing over him, and that only made it worse.

He stood facing them alone, trying desperately to bring himself back under control, but the pressure of a hundred people, a hundred walking wounded sharing his grief, waiting for him to express what they were feeling, was too much.

A small commotion in one corner went initially unnoticed. But Chris was grateful when Annie took the sheet of paper from the podium and finished the eulogy. When she came to the end, he leaned down and kissed her, whispering his thanks and wheeled her back to her place.

*****

He and Annie had had a long talk after the funeral, and it had been her determination to dance again that had spurred him forward where he might otherwise have wallowed in his grief. It was Annie who had also warned him against throwing himself into his work too quickly, but he had chosen to ignore that part of her advice.

He had a lot to thank Annie for, and he sincerely hoped that she had learnt to dance again. She was one of the few people he regretted not keeping in touch with. But it had hurt too much. He had immersed himself in the Seals, and then CI5 determined that one day he would find Alexandra's killers. He kept her picture by his bed so that every time he awoke his determination would be renewed.

Ever since the funeral, he had tried not to think about his feelings for her; how much it hurt. Tried not to think about what remained of his family. But the girl at the shack...

*****

They gazed adoringly into each other's eyes as they cut the cake. Family and friends cheered with champagne, the bright sunlight glinting off the glasses.

Then the nightmare of guns and bullets began, a white dress suddenly turned red, the screams of friends and family as they were cut down around them.

When the ambulance and police arrived, only a few dazed guests and caterers where wandering around. The massacre had left few unscathed and none unscarred. At the centre of the wedding, the centre of the massacre, bodies lay strewn across the grass.

The bride's father wept over his wife even as his own life bled out onto the grass through hole in his side.

The father of the groom in death still held his wife and daughter, unable to shield them entirely with his own body. His daughter stared skyward with unseeing eyes, and his wife moaned in pain beneath him.

A young woman screamed in agony over and over, the bullets having stitched a neat red line across her lower back.

The groom and his bride held each other, leaning against the table with the cake splattered all over the grass, mixing with the blood and the mud.

He leaned down to kiss her. "I'm sorry," she whispered, "I didn't mean to - He was – He was going to kill you – My husband - " she stared into his eyes with such intense love, wanting him to be the last thing she saw. The life left her quietly and her eyes never left his. Though he knew she was dead, he refused to believe it.

He gazed into her eyes, held her and spoke to her as though she was still alive, unaware of his own blood leaking from his shoulder, side and leg. When a paramedic gently pulled her away, the groom looked up at the man, "That's my wife, " he told him, slurring drunkenly before passing out.

*****

Annie had said to him, "Alex loved you, Chris, more than anything. I'm going to walk again, and you're going to love again. It'll take time, and there'll be a few obstacles, but we have to move forward, not too fast, and not too slow. Alex understood that. Grieve for her, and remember her. But move on."

He'd failed on all counts. He had moved a thousand miles away, run away from everyone and everything without moving a single step forward.

He had not grieved for her properly. The chapel had been a battle for control that he had almost lost. After that had come work, work and more work.

As for remembering her, He had even failed there. He remembered the pain of her death as fresh now as it ever was; he remembered his anger, her fathers' anger, both of which demanded satisfaction.

But he had forgotten her smile. Forgotten the way she laughed at jokes that weren't funny; the way she scratched her left eyebrow when she was worried or nervous; the way she would fearlessly battle spiders, wasps, bees, ants and any other bug that dared set foot in the tub, but would run screaming around the house if an earwig so much as waved hello from the garden.

As he sat there, it was almost as if Alex was sitting next to him. For the first time since her death, his thoughts of her were fond memories instead of obsessive vengeance.

He was lost in happy memories for some time, before a gentle hand on his shoulder brought him to the present. Sam stood there not saying anything. Chris nodded, and taking a last look at the plaque, clapped Sam on the shoulder.

"Remind me to book a few days off next June when we get back would you Sam?"

"Only if I get to come too; the sun, sea, sand and cemeteries are to die for around here."

The two men laughed, as they headed back to the car, and somewhere, Alexandra Keel was content to wait for husband, however long it took.

The End

 


End file.
